bantering tone ,’ ‘ murmured a hospitable commonplace and disappeared ’, leaving Alec to ask , ‘ I had better go home , don ’ t you think ?’ Who knows , is what I ’ d reply to Alec , because her refusal could be due to a many number of things , all of which are equally as valid , all operating at once , in a sort quantum superimposition … And even if we did know we ’ d never truly know no matter what Geneviève said , because we ’ re not her — and so Chambers asserts there ’ s a dangerous blurring between the lines of art and life , where people ’ s actions can be left up to interpretation . Authority and agency are taken away from a person whose every action can be treated as an artistic piece that can be challenged or even reinterpreted against their own will . And so we revisit Geneviève ’ s ‘ I think I love Boris best ’, paying special attention now to ‘ think ’. Geneviève didn ’ t know — and it ’ s this inability to be sure that leads to her falling ill for having made the wrong decision and subsequently trying to escape the awful situation she found herself in .
The Play , then , might drive
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people insane because it of how it addresses this conflation of art and life when it comes to the representation of one ’ s own thoughts to others and to themselves . We can see this idea foregrounded in a rare excerpt from the play :
CAMILLA : You , sir , should unmask .
STRANGER : Indeed ?
CAMILLA : Indeed it ’ s time . We all have laid aside disguise but you .
STRANGER : I wear no mask .
CAMILLA : [ terrified , aside to Cassilda ] No mask ? No mask !
The King in Yellow , Act i , Scene 228
The stranger , wearing no mask , terrifies Camilla who has ‘ laid aside disguise ’, because the stranger ’ s existence flies in the face of everything Camilla knows , that people act . To wear no ‘ mask ’ is to live outside of representation — it ’ s to live without a fiction of the self . And so the Stranger appears almost like an embodiment
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